


Death Do Us Part

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blood Drinking, Blood and Violence, Death Threats, Dirty Talk, Exhibitionism, M/M, Masturbation, Minor Character Death, Power Dynamics, Seduction, Vampire Sex, Vampire Turning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-06-25 16:55:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15644994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "There is something to be gained from this game, even if only for a few moments of entertainment in an eternity of endless boredom, and even knowing it will be forgotten in a year, or a decade, or a century, Illumi feels a heat very nearly like warmth stir in him at the prospect of even an ultimately futile pleasure." The passage of decades has long since stripped Illumi's existence of sources of interest, but Hisoka is good at eliciting a reaction, even from a vampire.





	1. Thirst

Illumi is hungry.

It comes upon him rarely. In his youth, several decades hence, he hardly experienced true hunger at all; the crowds of a city provided enough interest on their own to keep him lingering in the rush and hum of the noise, and the action, and the humanity so dense no one even thought to glance twice at the figure a little too pale, a little too graceful to entirely pass for mortal. Food was easy to come by, as much a matter of pleasure as a basic need; Illumi would sometimes feed twice in a week, sometimes twice in a night, guided by the thrill of the hunt or the enjoyment of a slow, menacing seduction, like that of a spider luring a fly deeper into its web before levelling an attack. But the pleasure to be gained from the process of teasing free a possible target from the relative protection of the crowd waned with the passing decades, draining itself from Illumi’s life as with so many of those things that once held his attention, until now he only ventures into the city to hunt when he must, when the trudge of sleepless nights and patient days has drained his life force enough to require an influx of fresh blood into his cold veins. He’s delayed for long weeks, now, as the duration of a month came and went in unseen dawns and unattended evenings, and now he can feel the ache in him like a wound, burning hot like the forgotten sun to demand quenching.

He’s not looking for any type of victim in particular. Some of his family members are more choosy, with tastes as rarified as the strength of the vampiric blood they bear: his brother only feeds from young women, his father likes to drink from fighters roped in muscle as heavy as his own. But Illumi has no strict preference, no ideal source for the living blood that fuels his immortal existence: men, women, young, old, criminal, saint, he cares little. It all serves the same purpose, in the end, in slaking the burn in his throat and granting an extension to the eternity that is his existence; without a set target, Illumi can let himself blend with the crowd around him, can let himself be borne forward as a leaf on the flood of humanity while his gaze flickers over unacknowledged faces in pursuit of a likely victim to sate his need for the evening.

Illumi’s in no real hurry. Humans no longer offer the intrigue they used to hold for his younger self -- even the delicate satisfaction of cruelty has long been behind him -- but neither are the people surrounding him the source of disgust they would be to his mother’s highbred sensibilities. He has no expectations, no priorities to take precedence over this one -- he can spend the whole of the night locating a victim, or even return with the following nightfall if he wishes or needs to. Still, he’s sure he’ll have no difficulty in securing a meal for himself; the crowds of the main street are difficult to separate into individuals, but the shadows of the alleys running alongside the main thoroughfare serve as their own kind of filter to urge aside those with less savory business and less concern for their own well-being. Illumi lets his gaze slide into the shadows of the alleys he’s carried past, his attention picking apart the subtle details mortal eyes would be unable to parse, looking for a cluster of rough men, or the huddled shape of a hungry child, or the weight of a shawl pulled tight around the open bodice of a woman for hire. He can make do with any of them, for the span of a few minutes and the weight of shadows to hide his actions; he’s just thinking of turning off the main path and taking up a position in the darkness himself when there’s a shout from alongside the road, a voice calling with the bell-clear volume of an experienced performer used to drawing attention.

“Hey there.” The tone cuts through the murmur of conversations, demanding attention for itself from among the crowd; Illumi keeps his head turned towards the alley he’s been considering instead of giving in to the flicker of instinct that tells him to turn and answer that demanding voice. He lets his gaze drift instead, sliding from under the shadow of his lashes and through the fall of his length-heavy hair, but even with his attention surely invisible to the young man slouching against the side of a stone-fronted building, Illumi finds himself looking straight into a gaze pinned fully on him.

“Yes, you.” The young man’s mouth drags onto a grin; for a moment the flash of his teeth is as white as if he’s one of Illumi’s own kind. If Illumi couldn’t see the rhythm of a heartbeat at the side of his throat even from the main road he might actually wonder as to the young man’s true identity; as it is he’s almost as taken aback at getting called out by a human. The man’s smile goes wider at Illumi’s hesitance; when he lifts a hand from his side it’s to beckon to the other in a movement so elegant it seems half a seduction in itself. “Surely you’re wealthy enough to spare a minute of casual conversation.”

Illumi doesn’t look down at the clothes he’s wearing. He doesn’t bother much with the details of his attire -- true fashion involves an attention to the passage of time that he can’t be bothered with -- but he keeps his clothing well-tailored, if only because it’s easier to pass his supernatural elegance off as that of a highbred young lord instead of trying to blend in amidst the common criminals that often form his easiest meals. The young man isn’t looking away from Illumi’s fixed attention; remarkable in itself, when most humans will turn pale with the intuitive fear of prey facing down its natural predator if they gaze too long into the eyes of any vampire as purebred as Illumi. But this man -- lithe and graceful in the comfortable strength of youth, with hair the color of fresh blood combed back from dark eyes and that knife-edge smile -- doesn’t so much as bat an eye, even when Illumi lets enough of his mask slip to send the crowd parting around him as a stream makes way for a stone.

“Hard to see you from all the way over there,” the man calls to Illumi. He lilts over the words, drawling them out by accent or affect into a song in their own right as he lifts his hand to push his hair back from his face and angle his face into the light. “And it would be a shame to not see someone beautiful as you.”

There’s nothing of fear in Illumi’s mind. Being called out so directly is certainly unusual, enough to merit care in itself; it’s been human generations since there was last so much as a rumor of a vampire hunter, but that is hardly proof against someone declaring themselves the scion of a failed profession. But petty tricks like wooden stakes or crosses dipped in holy water are hardly a threat even to the thin-blooded vampires created in the last decades; the last hunter Illumi ran into was a pleasant surprise, if only for the entertainment she provided before he drained the blood from her self-righteous body. If this man is indeed a hunter he can be dealt with as summarily; there is no danger in answering his summons, nothing to be risked in giving in to the urging of his voice. But none of that is what Illumi is thinking of, as he turns aside from the flow of the crowd and steps forward to separate himself from the masses and join the young man in the pool of orange illumination from the streetlight overhead; he’s feeling something different, as long-forgotten as fear but sweeter, sharper, almost like the memory of warmth against the ice that has long since filled his veins.

For the first time in nearly a century, Illumi is _interested_.

“There,” the young man says. He straightens from his languid slouch as Illumi approaches; they stand nearly of a height, even with the raised heels on the boots Illumi is presently wearing. The man has broader shoulders than he appeared to at first; Illumi thinks someone who didn’t get a good look at his own eyes might think him overmatched in the possibility of a fight with the stranger before him. But said stranger is gazing right into those eyes, looking into the darkness that Illumi well knows to carry the unfathomable depths of an endless night, of promised death, to mortal attention; and there is no sign anywhere in him of anything but the near-frantic energy that lent his voice strength in the first place. His gaze slides down, his eyes roving over Illumi’s face before tracking the line of his clothing, the fit of his vest, the shine of his buttons; scarlet eyebrows lift towards that slicked-back hair, lips colored to a vivid red purse on a whistle as singsongy as that voice. “You _are_ pretty, sir.” Lashes flutter, dark eyes cut up to meet Illumi’s gaze once more. “If it _is_ sir…?”

“It is,” Illumi says. He pauses for a moment, working through vague recollections of the last many years to return himself to the correct social norms of this one before he lifts his hand to offer over the distance between himself and the man before him. “Lord Illumi Zoldyck.”

“Zoldyck,” the man repeats back as he closes his hand around the glove that serves as a disguise for the inhuman chill of Illumi’s skin. “You must be new to the city. I haven’t heard of you in the usual gossip.”

“We’re foreign,” Illumi tells him. “Travelling through on holiday.”

“Ah,” the man sighs, as if this explains everything. “I should have known. Your looks aren’t the usual fare of the city.” He draws his hand free of Illumi’s and ducks into a bow, one low enough even Illumi’s disinterested memory can identify as deliberately archaic. “I’m Hisoka Morrow, your obedient servant.” He straightens again and lifts his hand to push through his hair once more as he flashes that shockingly-bright smile. “What kind of entertainments have you found in the city for yourself, Lord Zoldyck?”

Illumi lifts a shoulder into a shrug. “Nothing of note as yet.”

“That’s a shame.” Hisoka’s lashes dip, his chin comes down; when he looks up at Illumi the invitation is clear even before he speaks. “I’d be happy to show you around this part of town. In particular, there’s a charming little hotel right around the corner where you can take rooms by the hour.”

Epiphany strikes. Illumi rocks back on his heels and withdraws his hand to replace it securely in his pocket. “You mistake me,” he says with the flat weight of sincerity on the words rather than the edge of true offense they might merit. “I’m not looking for a whore.”

Illumi is expecting to see the grin fade off Hisoka’s face, to see those shadowed eyes go hard with irritation at wasted time before the other huffs and turns aside. Instead Hisoka’s eyebrows go up, his grin spreads the wider, and when he tips his head back it’s to spill a laugh so bright and loud Illumi can feel the attention of the crowd in the main street catching at the pair of them before they turn aside and hurry on.

“The mistake is entirely yours,” Hisoka tells him, when he’s collected back the burst of his amusement into the taut curve of that grin against his lips. “I’m not looking to be bought tonight.” He pauses to give Illumi an ostentatious once-over. “Or to be doing any buying.” He pauses at this, meeting Illumi’s gaze with one eyebrow cocked and his head angled like he’s waiting to see if he’ll strike sparks off the other’s temper; Illumi just gazes back at him, letting the cold distance of his attention speak to his lack of interest in the petty edge of human epithets. Hisoka seems to approve of this; his smile goes wider in any case, and he leans back against the edge of the wall at his back again as if they’ve somehow crossed a line and slipped into the comfortable intimacy of friends. “I just like the look of you.” He spreads his arms out to his sides and lifts his chin to turn his features up to the light; Illumi can see the shadow of what is surely makeup clinging to the curl of his lashes, can see the gleam of paint spread to outline the curve of his lips. Hisoka’s head angles more sharply to the side, his grin pulls hard at the corner of his mouth. “I thought you might be persuaded into some shared...indulgence.”

Everything about Hisoka is catered to seduction, from the paint on his face to the elegance of his clothes to the tilt of his hips. Illumi wonders, distantly and without much interest, if his grace comes from the experience of selling the use of his body to those more interested than Illumi himself, or if it’s something innate to his identity, some expression of his mortal-hot blood demanding release for a virility too much to be contained to more acceptable outlets. It’s certainly true that he’s far from one of Illumi’s usual victims, in a spotlight of his own making and with enough charm to draw eyes rather than chase them away, and there is always some measure of danger in taking on the unknown. But there’s still a flicker at the back of Illumi’s mind, long-sleeping curiosity stirring towards more restless dreams, if not to waking; and aside from the rest of it Illumi can see the pace of Hisoka’s heartbeat in the taut curve of his throat, his pulse thudding loud as a drumbeat to his predator-attuned ears, and hunger is keener in him than it has been for long weeks. Illumi had intended to quench his thirst with the deliberate attention of an engineer caring for a valuable piece of machinery, more for the necessity than the pleasure of it; but he can feel the ache in him like an echo of that human-strong heartbeat, can feel the almost-pleasant pull of delayed gratification within the cold silence of his chest. There is something to be gained from this game, even if only for a few moments of entertainment in an eternity of endless boredom, and even knowing it will be forgotten in a year, or a decade, or a century, Illumi feels a heat very nearly like warmth stir in him at the prospect of even an ultimately futile pleasure.

Illumi lifts his chin, tipping his head back so the long weight of his hair falls away to cast his features into the light. Hisoka’s gaze tracks the movement with open hunger, until Illumi almost expects to see his tongue slick the wet of anticipation across his lips. “Very well,” Illumi says, and watches Hisoka’s lashes dip, watches Hisoka’s head come down into shadow. “You may lead the way and I will follow.”

Hisoka doesn’t protest this. Hisoka doesn’t, in fact, speak at all. He just shows his teeth to Illumi, a slow drag of a smile that Illumi can identify as the deliberate seduction it is clearly meant to be, before turning to straighten from his lean and take the lead down the street with a lilt to his hips as his moves enough to match the sound of his voice. Illumi follows with more deliberate care, efficient more than elegant, but he still know why the crowd parts for them both, and it’s not the sinuous sway of Hisoka’s body that clears their way to the promised hotel.

It’s not as if it will make a difference in the end. Illumi has never been one to confuse style with substance, and he knows exactly which one of them is the predator and which the prey, even if his hot-blooded meal does not.

He’ll learn soon enough, anyway.


	2. Sate

Hisoka doesn’t hesitate at all after they reach their hotel room.

Illumi appreciates that. He could have reached for the other the moment they were in the isolation of a dark street or ensconced in the privacy of the room Hisoka secured for them; it would be a matter of seconds, perhaps a minute if the other struggles, to sink his teeth into his victim’s neck and swallow all the vibrant life Hisoka has radiating from him to warm Illumi’s own chill veins. But he hasn’t, he has gone on waiting for reasons he can’t fully articulate and isn’t sure he understands himself, and with his eternal patience drawn thin over the raw need of his thirst he’s happy to know Hisoka isn’t the type to play coy. The other starts stripping as soon as they’re within the walls of their room, without waiting for the sound of Illumi turning the lock over to guarantee them privacy; his jacket and vest are both off by the time he glances back, fingers working open the buttons down the front of his shirt as he ducks his head to Illumi standing statue-still where he came in.

“Well?” Hisoka says, and pulls his shirt loose of his pants to shrug it off his shoulders and to the floor. “I hope you’re not planning on keeping all that on, are you?” Illumi blinks, startled by this direct invitation in spite of himself, and Hisoka grins and turns aside to strip off his pants with as little self-consciousness as he showed for his shirt. There’s moonlight spilling through the hotel window, illumination catching Hisoka’s skin to ivory and draining the color from his hair to turn it as night-black as Illumi’s own; Hisoka steps forward to stand outlined in the frame, looking down at the city street below with no indication whatsoever of concern at having his nakedness glimpsed by a stranger. His casual indecency presses something tight in Illumi’s belly, like the weight of a blow but without any of the distant pain that is all he feels, now, and Illumi’s hands find their way to the clasp of his cloak before he thinks.

He’s slower about stripping himself than Hisoka, more careful over the unfamiliar process -- he has far fewer occasions than most humans to bare his skin to the air -- but Hisoka turns as soon as Illumi is straightening to push his hair back from his shoulder, twisting at the window to cast himself into profile in the moonlight. His teeth catch the light again, flashing like a candleflame as his gaze wanders with overt appreciation over the length of Illumi’s bare legs, the span of his chest, the weight of his cock flaccid and cool between his thighs, and then he ducks his head, and lifts a hand to gesture towards the heavy hangings and tidy sheets of the bed between them.

“Make yourself at home.” Illumi considers the bed -- wide, twice again as broad as the narrow space in which he spends his daylight hours imprisoned away from the dangers of the sunlight -- but Hisoka turns without waiting for his obedience, padding across the hotel floor with no visible embarrassment at either the shift of his naked body or the lazy bobbing of his erect cock standing out from the curls winding around the base. Illumi watches him move, still held by whatever inexplicable interest brought him here in the first place; and then he turns, and makes his way on soundless steps across the distance of the hotel room to the bed. He presses a hand to the surface, feeling out the give of the mattress with idle interest, and then he climbs into the very center, positioning himself flat and straight over the smooth of the blankets with his hair spreading out into a wave around him. He gazes up at the ceiling, waiting while he turns over the feel of curiosity in his veins, while he whets his appetite with the unfamiliar rough of delay, until there’s a purr of a laugh, so dark and sultry that Illumi can picture Hisoka’s smile without needing to lift his head to look.

“Creepy,” Hisoka tells him from the doorway. “You look like a corpse laid out like that.” There’s the pattern of footsteps, swift strides crossing the narrow distance of the room, and then the shift of the mattress as Hisoka comes in to join Illumi where he’s lying. There’s a touch at Illumi’s thigh, elegant fingers sliding in and across his skin, and Hisoka hisses.

“Feel like one too,” he says. “Even in all those clothes you were still this cold?” But he’s not drawing his hand away; his fingers are curling around instead, trailing over the inside of Illumi’s thigh at the same time they verge up and into indecency without any more hesitation than Hisoka showed with his own body.

“Don’t worry,” he says, and pushes to spread Illumi’s leg wider on the sheets. “I’m sure I can find something that’ll warm you up.”

Illumi blinks at him. “I’m sure.”

Hisoka purrs over another of those laughs and reaches to push Illumi’s other leg open. Illumi doesn’t resist any more than he helps; he just stays still, watching Hisoka move with that vague curiosity that still, for now, is enough to keep his mouth shut and his fangs hidden. Hisoka’s eyebrow lifts, his lips purse, and when he hums again it catches into a whistle, musical and sweet as birdsong.

“Maybe not a corpse,” he allows. “You’re more like a doll, like this.” He presses his palms in against the inside of Illumi’s knees, spreading his fingers wide as he pushes his hands up; Illumi can feel the slick against one hand, wet at Hisoka’s fingers and spilling across his palm from where he was careless or just hasty with the oil he’s made use of. Illumi ought to stop him, probably, ought to push to sit up and reach to fist his fingers into that crimson hair and tear open Hisoka’s slender throat with his teeth to spill heat down his throat and drink until that muscular body is as cold and still as his own; but he’s never experienced the raw instinct of human rutting, and he finds himself intrigued by the prospect now as he never has been before. His throat is dry, his tongue aching with want for the rhythm of Hisoka’s heart beating faster, now, as he settles one hand at Illumi’s hip and draws those slick fingers up to toy at the tension of the other’s entrance; but curiosity is winning out, still, holding him slack and limp against the sheets even with his unknowing prey so entirely within reach.

“You’re not tense at all,” Hisoka purrs. His touch slides apart, one finger presses up and in, and Illumi blinks again, startled in spite of himself by the pressure inside him as Hisoka’s touch urges into his body. Hisoka hisses at the back of his throat and draws back fractionally, twisting his finger to spread the slick of the oil before urging back in. “You’re as tight as a virgin, though.”

“I am a virgin,” Illumi says. Hisoka’s head comes up, his gaze fixes on Illumi’s; there’s a moment of shock in his expression, a heartbeat of almost-disbelief in his eyes. Then his lashes dip, his clear stare goes shadowed with anticipation, and he hums pleasure in the back of his throat as he pushes in again.

“That’s crazy,” he informs Illumi. “You can’t convince me no one’s ever wanted to bed you before.” His finger tenses, curling up and inside Illumi’s body to urge against the other’s inner walls. “Unless you mean you’ve just never been fucked.”

Illumi shakes his head. “No,” he says, his voice steady as Hisoka’s finger draws away before thrusting back into him. “I’ve never been with anyone.”

“Mm.” Hisoka urges his hand forward, rocking in to bring the whole strength of his arm to bear on the force of his touch. Illumi blinks again at the feel of the other’s finger sinking as far into him as Hisoka can reach. “I’m flattered to be doing the honors then.” He pulls his hand back, twisting his finger as he goes before working back in through another steady thrust.

“You really are relaxed,” he observes, his gaze tracking Illumi’s face as his hand works between the other’s legs. His teeth flash again; Illumi keeps his lips close over his own, hiding the giveaway of his hunger-slick fangs behind the flat line of his lips. “A pretty doll just waiting to be played with.” He ducks his head down to look between Illumi’s legs; when a second finger touches alongside the first Illumi consciously relaxes to allow space for Hisoka’s touch to urge up into him. Hisoka groans in the back of his throat, a low, dark sound as if with hunger of his own; Illumi watches the other’s cock jump towards his stomach as a droplet of shining liquid spills from the head. The thought reminds him of his own length, still soft and heavy at his thigh; Hisoka is moving faster, now, clearly caught in anticipation of the release he thinks is coming for himself more than in Illumi’s own response, but Illumi doesn’t see any point in risking distraction before the culmination he’s now more than idly interested in. He focuses on the length of his cock, the thick weight of it that he usually ignores as an unimportance in his personal needs; under his attention the blood in his veins shifts, collecting from the extremities of his fingers and toes to spill into his length and flush the soft towards heat of its own.

Hisoka laughs again. There’s a brittle edge to his amusement, like the glint of starlight off a whisper-sharp blade; it stirs against Illumi’s spine, flickering something like heat into him as if answering the deliberate intention that is swelling his cock. “Liking that a bit more, are you?” His hold at Illumi’s hip pulls to urge the other down across the bed; Illumi lets himself be drawn without protest or resistance. “You’ll be sure to enjoy yourself with me.”

“I will,” Illumi says, a vow and not agreement, but Hisoka doesn’t hear the danger on his words, or if he does he doesn’t heed it. He’s grinning all over his face, baring his teeth as if they are the threat Illumi’s are in truth, and there’s a rhythm to his motion, now, the flex of effort working all the way up his arm and shoulder to strain across his chest as he works Illumi open around his fingers. Illumi watches the movement for a moment, feeling the unfamiliar heat of physical arousal in his cock urging his attention to strange details: the breadth of Hisoka’s knuckles as they slide past his entrance, the hard points of his nipples drawn taut on his chest, the ache of something foreign and unnamed deep down in his abdomen. Then Hisoka groans, and slides his fingers back and out, and in the absence of his rhythm Illumi’s gaze finds the pattern of Hisoka’s heart pounding in his chest, and the flutter of his pulse at the side of his throat, and uncanny human desire is eclipsed entirely by the surge of hot thirst all through his mouth and down the back of his throat.

Hisoka’s humming again, giving voice to that note of lilting pleasure in his throat as he sets his hands under Illumi’s knees and lifts and pulls to spread the other’s legs wide. “So flexible,” he purrs, sounding pleased as if this is some kind of a benefit to the basic reality of what he thinks he is about to obtain in sinking his cock into the heat of a willing partner, as if his lifespan isn’t measuring itself in the seconds of Illumi’s vanishing patience. “You’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.” Illumi doesn’t bother trying to point out the misunderstanding implicit in the statement, and Hisoka doesn’t wait for an answer; he just lifts his gaze to Illumi’s, pleasure-hazed eyes meeting arousal of a different, keener kind. His hands flex at Illumi’s knees, his grip tightens to brace the other still, and then his hips crest forward, his cock slides up and in to sheathe itself into Illumi’s body, and when his head arches back on a full-throated moan Illumi can see the vibration of sound work against the strained tension of his neck like an offering.

“ _Ah_ ,” Hisoka gasps, so loud it’s almost a shout, certainly loud enough to be heard through the walls of the hotel room around them; but his self-consciousness shows no signs of returning, as he draws his hips back by a half-inch to buck forward again and fuck himself in against Illumi’s body. “Ah, _ah_ , _ahh_.” His voice breaks on heat, his head falls to the side like he can’t hold it up; and Illumi’s curiosity gives way, caving in like crumbling masonry under the overwhelming, impossible force of the supernatural hunger that guides his existence. His thighs tighten, sliding free of Hisoka’s hold without effort to pin the other’s hips tight in the unbreakable hold of inhuman strength, his body flexes to pull him up off the sheets as he reaches to clench at Hisoka’s loose hair, and he wrenches the other’s head to the side by his hold, dragging Hisoka’s throat bare to the slide of moonlight and Illumi’s own hunger-fevered gaze. Illumi’s hand comes up to dig bruises into the top of Hisoka’s arm, his nails catching to threaten damage to the skin beneath his hold, and his mouth is already open as his head comes down, the sharp points of his fangs catching to tear into Hisoka’s skin and spill the sweet thick of fresh blood into his wanting mouth. Illumi’s lips press flush to Hisoka’s neck, his throat works with the full strength of instinct flexing to suck at Hisoka’s body and draw lifeblood from the other’s form into Illumi’s, and for the first long seconds all Illumi thinks of is the heat surging into him, coursing down his throat and glowing illumination through his veins and sating the need in his tight-wound body.

It takes him some time to realize Hisoka has gone still. Illumi’s prey fights, usually, unless they are so thoroughly in the grip of drugs or delirium that even an overt threat to their life can’t rouse them. His hold carries an expectation of that fight, as he brings his own vampiric strength to bear to incapacitate the power clear in the ripple of muscle under the other’s skin. But Hisoka isn’t moving, isn’t struggling or screaming or protesting at all; he’s so statue-still that for a moment Illumi wonders if he didn’t kill him too soon, if hunger hadn’t led him to misjudge his movement and snap the bones of the other’s neck in wrenching his head to the side. But Hisoka’s blood is still hot, his pulse is still thudding under the drag of Illumi’s tongue, and his cock is still hard as it was, still sheathed tightly inside Illumi’s body. Illumi draws back for a moment, startled into hesitating even with his whole existence singing with the bliss of fresh blood, and when he looks over Hisoka is watching him from under the weight of his lashes where Illumi has his head pulled to the side. His gaze flickers over Illumi’s face as the other pulls back, tracking the part of the other’s lips, the point of the fangs now left bare, the color of blood Illumi can feel clinging crimson and sticky to his lips; and his lashes flutter, his throat works on a sigh that comes out nearly a moan.

“ _Ah_.” There’s no fear in the sound, none of the abject horror Illumi is expecting. Hisoka sounds like he’s just solved a mystery, as if he’s stumbled onto an orgasmic epiphany. “So that’s it.” He purrs over a laugh. “I _thought_ you were cold.”

Illumi presses his lips together so he can swallow the traces of Hisoka’s blood off his tongue before licking the cooling wet off his lower lip. The wound at the other’s neck is still pulsing blood, spilling a trail of red down over Hisoka’s collarbone and trickling down his chest with each beat of the other’s heart; it’s hard for Illumi to keep his focus on anything else. “Yes,” he says. There’s no reason to deny it, even if he thought he were likely to get away with the lie. “You were more right in your first comparison.”

Hisoka’s throat works on the strain of a laugh. “No,” he says. His hand shifts under the force of Illumi’s leg pinning it to his side; his fingernails catch and scratch just under the curve of Illumi’s ass. “I had no _idea_ what you are.”

Illumi keeps watching Hisoka’s face. It’s strange to see such an absence of fear in someone who has so fully lost any hope of escape they have. Illumi wonders if perhaps the other is confused about what this means for him, if he doesn’t understand the full ramifications of the situation. He blinks and lays perfect honesty out over his tongue. “I’m going to kill you.”

Hisoka grins. “Of course you are.” He doesn’t sound sarcastic; there’s no indication of doubt in his face. His expression _is_ shifting, though: it’s in the quiver at his lips, the flutter of his lashes, the flush across his cheeks. His hand at Illumi’s thigh shifts; his hips tilt up against the other’s weight. “Can I keep fucking you anyway?”

Illumi stares at Hisoka for a long moment. There’s perfect silence for a span of time; the only thing Illumi can hear is the rhythm of Hisoka’s heart beating against the inside of his chest and the rasp of his breathing working as hard. Hisoka’s body is taut, like a bowstring pulled back to its fullest extension; his fingers scratch at Illumi’s thigh like he’s struggling for traction. Illumi gazes at the other, at the tangle of his red hair, and the open part of his lips on his breathing, and the dizzy heat of arousal staining his cheeks as if with flame; and then Hisoka’s lashes lift, his gaze meets Illumi’s, and Illumi blinks and lets the strain in his thighs go to give the other back the use of his hands.

Hisoka doesn’t even hesitate. It’s as if he knew what Illumi would do, as if he was already expecting the other’s reaction; he’s leaning forward at once, letting his shoulders hunch in and over Illumi to drop them both back to the bed without any action to catch their weight. Hisoka lands hard atop Illumi, with force enough to crush the air from Illumi’s lungs if he had any need for breath, but Hisoka doesn’t pause to seize a breath of his own before he’s dragging a hand up to clutch at the top edge of the mattress, to curl his fingers into a vicious hold as his other hand comes down to dig in against Illumi’s ass and drag the other up against him. His hips move fast, snapping forward to drive his cock as far into the other’s body as he can get, and Illumi lets his hold on Hisoka’s arm go to reach around instead and splay his fingers at the other’s shoulder as he lifts his head to sink his teeth back into Hisoka’s neck and drink deep from the coursing heat of his blood.

They lose all concept of time, like that. There’s an ache inside Illumi’s body, a dull, slow-rising pressure warm enough to keep his cock hard over his stomach, to keep his thighs open around Hisoka’s hips, and over it, brighter and clearer like the sun to the moon, is the surging satisfaction of feeding, as he pulls long swallows of Hisoka’s life to slake the burn in his throat at the same time the other chases the tension of his own desire down against the span of Illumi’s body beneath his. Hisoka is moaning, Illumi hears, or feels, maybe, in the vibration against his chest and the flex of those fingers at his skin; his pulse seems to surge hotter with each pitching groan, as if to drown Illumi in the physical pleasure of the man more interested in seeking out his own immediate release than in the hope of a continued future. The insanity of it fires Illumi’s thoughts, crackles flame down into his body as if he’s drinking Hisoka’s madness as quickly as his blood, until he can feel his cock pulsing with the heat he’s drained from the other, until he can’t tell the difference between the relief of blood in his dry throat and the raw heat of Hisoka’s body pumping into his physical form. Illumi’s cock is twitching between them with every thrust Hisoka takes, his throat flexing on need in time with the reflexive strain in Hisoka’s thighs as the other moves over him, until when Hisoka drives up and into him Illumi doesn’t know if it’s the taste of the other’s blood or the weight of his cock that curves at his spine and flexes at his shoulders to eclipse his night-dark existence with the brief, temporary flare of pleasure bright as sunlight against his skin. His teeth give way at Hisoka’s shoulder, his lips part on a splash of blood, and Illumi’s body convulses into pleasure that spatters over Hisoka’s stomach over him and spills crimson to trail from the corner of his mouth to the line of his neck. Hisoka groans again, low and hot and so long Illumi wonders if it’s not the helpless exhale of a dying man cast into sensuality by whatever fire burns in Hisoka’s body; but when he spasms it’s with pleasure instead of mortality as he spills his release to fill Illumi’s cold body with his seed as well as his blood. Illumi presses his lips to Hisoka’s shoulder, slicking his tongue across already-spilled blood rather than bothering with marking him with another set of puncture wounds, and Hisoka collapses to drop the full weight of his slack body atop Illumi’s beneath him.

Illumi is languid about collecting himself back into the span of his usual identity. He’s in no hurry, not with the whole of eternity spread long before him, and the pleasure purring through his veins is an unusual enough satisfaction to be worth savouring. Hisoka is still against him, his head turned to the side so the drip of his slow-clotting blood lands in the dip of Illumi’s throat, but Illumi can feel his heart still beating, can feel his skin still flush with life in spite of the quantity of his blood spilled down Illumi’s throat and over both their bodies. They’re both a mess, sticky with blood and come and sweat and oil; but even so Illumi lingers longer than he expects, turning over the feel of Hisoka over and in him until he finally musters the focus to push the other up by his shoulder and over onto the other side of the bed so he can sit up and take stock of himself.

His thighs are slick, as coated with Hisoka’s essence as his tongue; Illumi gazes at his stomach for long seconds, considering the pearlescent sheen over bone-pale skin while his cock softens with his inattention to its heat. He’s still looking when there’s a touch at his hair, the weight of fingers tugging at the end of the strands, and he pivots with inhuman speed to grab at Hisoka’s wrist and pin it to the bed while he brings his other hand up to close around the other’s neck. Hisoka falls back at once, without resisting at all; he just looks up at Illumi over him, his eyes enormous and night-dark in the bloodless pallor of his face.

“Are you going to kill me now?” He doesn’t sound afraid; only curious, as if he’s asking after someone else’s existence, someone else’s life. Illumi looks at him for a moment, watching the blue sheen at his lips and feeling the flutter of Hisoka’s heartbeat under his fingers; and then he lets his bruising hold ease and pulls to sit up and away.

“Don’t touch my hair,” he says instead of answering, and goes to find the bathroom so he can make an attempt to tidy himself.

Hisoka is still on the bed when Illumi emerges from the bathroom cleaned and tidied until he’s as elegant as he was on the street, if still absent the covering of clothes for his slender limbs and pale skin. Illumi only glances at his recent lover, only enough to confirm that the joint effect of pleasure and blood loss have rendered Hisoka entirely passive, before he turns his back on the other and focuses his efforts on returning his clothes to their proper place on his body. He reassembles the whole of his outfit, from the polished dark of his shoes to the knot of his cravat, and it’s only then that he turns to look to the other once more.

Hisoka is just as he was: on his back over the sheets, naked of any covering but what evidence of their mutual satisfaction he bears across his skin. He’s tipped one knee open wider over the bed to lay bare the long inside flex of his thigh, and he has one hand down to wrap his grip into idle friction against his half-hard cock, as if he’s trying to urge his spent body into another arousal; otherwise he hasn’t moved at all, even to lift his head from the angle Illumi’s hold forced it to.

Illumi ducks his head towards the tugging fingers. “You don’t have the blood to spare for that.”

Hisoka’s teeth flicker. “We’ll see,” he says. He turns his head at the sheets; his hair rumples with the motion, tangling under him in waves of crimson. “You said you were going to kill me.”

“I did,” Illumi says. “I am.”

Hisoka’s lashes don’t flicker. “When?”

Illumi doesn’t blink. “Not tonight.”

Hisoka goes on watching him for a moment, his hand still urging over the weight of his cock as it struggles to rise to the occasion. Illumi can’t get a read on his expression; then again, he doubts Hisoka is obtaining much insight from the blank stare Illumi is offering him in return. Finally Hisoka turns his head back and heaves a sigh, the resignation of it pulled taut around the start of a grin at his lips.

“I suppose I shouldn’t complain,” he says. “Let’s not make it a terribly long engagement, though, Sir Vampire.” He’s gaining traction on his arousal, to Illumi’s distant interest; as Illumi watches Hisoka lifts his other hand from beside his head and brings it down between his thighs to rub against his own entrance. “I’m impatient for my wedding night.”

“Noted,” Illumi says. He stands still for a moment, watching Hisoka watching him; and then he turns, and moves towards the door just as the other urges a finger into himself.

The hallway echoes with the sound of the moan on Hisoka’s lips, but Illumi has vanished into the shadows by the time the door shuts behind him.


	3. Turn

Illumi enjoys keeping a pet more than he expected he would.

It’s not an uncommon practice. He’s heard of other families doing it; in some bloodlines maintaining a household of humans bound by blood and loyalty to their masters is the norm, as obvious a survival technique as a group of mortals keeping a flock of sheep or a herd of cows. The Zoldycks classically have kept themselves more removed than that; even the convenience of easy meals doesn’t outweigh the general difficulties and risks that come with keeping large numbers of humans close to hand. But even then, Illumi’s mother finds it easier to establish working relationships with some of her prey, at least for the span of a few years, and Illumi suspects his younger brother Killua has indulged in thoughts of the same, even if he hasn’t yet set about finding such a willing participant. The thought has never before appealed to Illumi, though: it seemed simpler to just drain his victims dry, to claim the full of their blood to extend the gap between one feeding and the next, and he’s never found any of his prey interesting enough to merit more than the few minutes it takes to sink his fangs into the steady thump of blood through an artery or a flush vein.

Hisoka is different. Illumi has seen thousands of humans over the years, has long since worked through everything humanity has ever offered him by way of fleeting interest; but he’s never met anyone like Hisoka. Other humans have begged for their lives, have pled or bargained or wept as if their emotions are likely to affect Illumi’s distant existence; Hisoka takes Illumi’s indifference as a given, seems to relish in the ease with which the other might steal his life and cut short the thin thread of the existence he rides with such fierce energy. Hisoka’s pleasure is all his own, thriving as easily on Illumi’s cold dismissal as on any kind of reciprocation; it takes very few interludes for Illumi to discover that Hisoka’s arousal is a force unto itself, something that seems to operate more at the other’s will than with any kind of logic. Hisoka moans when Illumi’s fangs break his skin, shudders when Illumi’s nails dig into him; he comes for Illumi’s teeth, Illumi’s hands, Illumi’s cock, as if proximity to the danger the other presents is heady intoxication in and of itself. Illumi feeds from every part of him: his neck, biting deep into the rhythm of the other’s pulse to leave wounds that trickle sluggish red even as he’s departing for the night. His wrist, held out like an offering to a physician of years before, as if Illumi’s bite will bleed from Hisoka whatever sadistic arousal flushes his cock so hard with the threat of danger. His thigh, high up against the pale skin, so his groaning orgasm splashes sticky into the dark fall of Illumi’s hair; once even from his cock itself, when Illumi drew the catch of his teeth into a trickle of blood to flavor the bitter of Hisoka’s come in his throat with the iron-thick heat of the other’s life. Hisoka is food to Illumi, an easy meal willing to offer himself for the asking without concern for his own survival; and Illumi is pleasure to Hisoka, a source of as much arousal for the danger of his inhuman appetite as for what more basic satisfaction the other can find in the cool of Illumi’s pliant body. They satisfy each other, hunger and desire spilling into each other as easily as Hisoka’s blood and Illumi’s release merge on their bodies; and Illumi lets Hisoka live, and lets the weeks slide past into something almost like a routine.

They are in Hisoka’s favorite location, tonight: a narrow apartment high in a cluster of similar spaces available for cheap rent. Illumi doesn’t know how Hisoka gains access to the space: they could be fucking on a stranger’s bed, for all he knows or cares. Maybe Hisoka rents this room by the night, the same way he does with the hotel beds they leave stained with evidence of their trysts; maybe this is the intimacy of his home that he shares with Illumi as easily as he shares the beat of his heart. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s a space, with the weight of a door to hold out an audience for the span of a few hours, and that they are both in it, and that Illumi is hungry.

His clothes are long-since lost, dropped into a heap by the door as soon as he came in. Hisoka was already naked when Illumi arrived, even though Illumi gave no instruction that he was coming; it’s been a week since their last interaction, after all, and Illumi’s appetite moves with all the clockwork certainty nearly a century of existence can grant it. Hisoka had watched from the other side of the room, grinning lasciviously as Illumi stripped his clothes free of his body and came forward to the bed, and he was straddling Illumi’s thighs to rut his erection against the line of the other’s hip before Illumi had even willed the cool weight of his cock to hardness. Hisoka’s on him, now, weight tipped far back as he fucks himself on Illumi’s cock with long, grinding strokes he punctuates with full-throated moans of pleasure, and Illumi lets him, contenting himself with the open angle of Hisoka’s wrist pressing to his mouth while he sucks deep of the heat in the other’s veins.

They could stay for hours, like this. Sometimes they do; the duration of their interludes is a matter of Hisoka’s preference, most nights. Illumi drinks deep and hard or slow and savouring, depending on the pace of Hisoka’s actions and the relative frenzy of his need; sometimes he’ll leave when the other is too spent to muster even his seemingly ever-present arousal, sometimes when blood loss has left Hisoka too woozy to manage clear speech. Tonight seems to be one of the slow nights, from the arrhythmia of Hisoka’s movements; Illumi slows his pace to match, drawing his tongue against the other’s wrist to lap at the droplets of blood welling up there rather than sinking his fangs into one of the thicker veins and draining Hisoka to the verge of unconsciousness. It makes no difference to Illumi: the variance of a minute and an hour is hardly noticeable, with all of eternity to measure it against, and there’s a pleasure just in seeing Hisoka guide them, to granting the other the illusion of independence for a span. So Illumi lets Hisoka ride the heat of the other’s deliberate erection, and grips hard against that slack wrist, and he sates his hunger in sips rather than in one long quaff.

When Hisoka speaks, he does so with no warning at all. Illumi is accustomed to the other’s vocalizations -- Hisoka seems incapable of passing so much as five minutes without some kind of throaty purr or warbling moan to give voice to the immediacy of his pleasure -- but he rarely bothers with coherent words, which generally saves Illumi the trouble of responding. But tonight he gasps for a lungful of air after a long, keening note in his throat, and instead of giving way to another groan he shapes his throat around words with somewhat more meaning than the simplicity of animal pleasure.

“Illumi.” That’s another shock; Illumi can count on one hand the number of times Hisoka has ever spoken his name, if he cared to do so. It’s enough to lift his gaze from the other’s wrist, to pull his mouth from the slow spill of blood under Hisoka’s skin to meet the heat of his smouldering gaze instead. Hisoka is smiling at Illumi, his mouth twisted up sharp at one corner like he’s holding back some exciting secret; Illumi blinks at him, offering his silent attention to whatever the other has to say.

Hisoka shifts his wrist in Illumi’s hold, flexing against the other’s grip on him. “Have you ever used your full strength on me?”

Illumi gazes up at him. “No,” he says, without hesitation.

Hisoka adopts a pout as ill-suited to the dark knowing of his eyes as the petulance of his words is to the sultry slur of his voice. “Why not?”

“It hasn’t been necessary.”

Hisoka’s scarlet eyebrows leap towards his hairline. “Hasn’t been _necessary_ ,” he repeats. The childish whine is gone from his voice like it was never there; Illumi watches the other’s gaze harden, watches his smile tighten like a knife gaining a keener edge. “Why is that?” He turns his hand around in Illumi’s hold, pivoting to catch his fingers against the other’s hand and pushing to urge Illumi’s arm back to the bed. “You think I couldn’t hold my own against you?”

It’s not the words. Hisoka says all manner of things, most obscene and all offensive; Illumi hardly cares for words, not when they can be so simply manipulated into lies or half-truths. But Hisoka’s hand is around Illumi’s wrist, his feeble human strength pinning the other to the bed as if he thinks he truly stands a chance at dominance, as if he thinks they are equals, as if he holds Illumi’s life in his hand as surely as Illumi holds his, and all the pride Illumi received along with the strength of his bloodline rebels against being taunted by a human like this, even in jest.

He moves immediately. Hisoka doesn’t have a chance to react; even if he did, Illumi knows there is nothing he could possibly offer to stand in Illumi’s way. It’s a matter of thought, a whim as easily formed as done: to surge up from the bed, rising and turning as part of the same motion to sweep Hisoka in and under the sheets in Illumi’s place. Hisoka’s shoulders slam into the support, his breath spills from his lungs in a gasp of pain at the impact, and Illumi pins both his hands up above his head, pressing so hard his nails puncture skin and spill the sweet scent of fresh blood into the air. His knees come down, his thighs flexing to spread Hisoka’s wide beneath him as he thrusts his hips forward to make use of his cock as another means to pin the other down to the sheets, and when Illumi leans down and in it’s to bare the full length of his fangs in a hiss better suited to a confrontation with another immortal than for the petty purpose of intimidating a human. Illumi lets his human seeming give way, lets the full force of his gaze lock with Hisoka’s eyes to override the other’s instincts with raw predatory power, and when his throat grates on sound it’s dark and cold and inhuman enough to stem even Hisoka’s indefatigable virility with instinctive terror.

“ _Do not toy with me, mortal_.” Illumi’s voice tears up the whole length of his spine, expanding like wings to fill the narrow space around them; beneath him Hisoka is gazing into his face, his mouth open and slack with the incoherent weight of fear enough to soften even his cock against his stomach. “ _I am master of power your mind would balk to imagine_.”

Hisoka stares up into Illumi’s face, wide-eyed and knocked silent for the first moment of shock. His heart is hammering in his chest; Illumi can hear the stutter as adrenaline courses through the other’s veins to force his breathing out-of-rhythm with the desire to run from the unavoidable, with the need to fight the unbeatable. Illumi holds his gaze, pinning Hisoka down with body and mind and intent, demanding absolute, unquestioning surrender; and then Hisoka’s mouth tightens, and his lips pull, and his teeth flash into the unmistakable bright of a grin.

“Show me,” he says, and there’s enough command on the words to tighten Illumi’s chest on the ache of anger, that this _mortal_ still dares to order him. Hisoka tips his head to the side and lifts his chin to pull the line of his neck tight with straining muscle; Illumi can see the flesh work as the other swallows against the strain. “I want to know what it’s like.”

Illumi stares at Hisoka’s throat for a long while, watching the rhythm of the other’s heart pounding with the life still in him, thinking of the taste of blood hot on his tongue and slicking the back of his throat with _enough_ , with the indulgent satisfaction of a full meal at last. It’s only after he’s made up his mind -- in himself, if not to give it voice -- that he bothers to raise his gaze back to meet the dark of Hisoka’s waiting stare. “I’ll kill you.”

Hisoka’s teeth flash. “I know,” he says. “You promised you would.” His legs angle around Illumi’s hips, his body flexes to urge the other down against him; for a moment everything he is is an invitation, from the dark of his lashes to the strain at his throat to the fluttering tension of his body around Illumi’s length. “I want to see what the honeymoon has to offer.”

Illumi looks at Hisoka for another moment. His aspect is still unclouded -- he hasn’t bothered to retreat behind the glamour that usually keeps his expression passably human, bearable to gaze upon for most mortals -- but Hisoka is looking up at him with open hunger in his face, with a craving that Illumi recognizes from the long spans that he himself has gone without blood, until instinct lays claim to him and sets him upon the first living creature he finds. Hisoka will try to claim this for himself, with or without Illumi’s assistance; and with his own rarely-awakened temper still glowing to an ember inside his chest, there’s nothing Illumi’s instinct wants more than to give Hisoka the full, damning force of he is so foolish in begging for. He gazes at Hisoka, lingering in the dark of the other’s eyes, tracing out the reckless delight at the other’s lips; and then he lets his hold on Hisoka’s hands go, and braces his palm hard against the other’s neck, and ducks in to sink his teeth deep into the artery that flutters with such tempting heat under the other’s skin.

Hisoka moans with the first bite. Illumi can feel his hips buck up in reflexive response to this dual penetration of his body; against Illumi’s chill skin the jerk of Hisoka’s cock is like fire painting a path against him. Illumi doesn’t move, doesn’t loosen his hand or the press of his teeth; he just stays where he is, fangs sunk deep into Hisoka’s neck as his throat works to drain long, cascading waves of blood from the other’s veins to quench the supernatural need of his own. Beneath him Hisoka is trembling, quivering with the ripples of supernatural sensation that spill from the effect of vampiric teeth in mortal skin; his hands are scrabbling against Illumi, fingers digging into dark hair and nails scratching at smooth flesh and his body arching against the unflinching resistance of the vampire over him. His cock is swelling harder, urged to helpless heat by the waves of pleasure granted as a final indulgence to vampiric victims; when Illumi’s throat works to pull another swallow of blood from Hisoka he can feel the other’s body jerk beneath him as Hisoka groans himself into orgasm in response to Illumi draining him. His cock spills wet between them, his body seizes hard around Illumi’s length pinning him to the bed, and Illumi keeps drinking, sucking Hisoka’s lifeforce from him so the spasm of orgasm gives way with seamless speed to the weak tremors of failing life. The grip in Illumi’s hair eases, the nails digging at his skin go slack as Hisoka’s hand falls to the bed under the weight of his arm; and Illumi goes on, swallowing back long draughts of the other’s blood until his face is flushed with it, until he can feel the excess heavy as solid in him as the thick of his cock, hard now without any thought on his part at all. The heat rises in him like a tide, filling the cool of his body like a fever, like sunlight, until Illumi’s shoulders tense, his fingers tighten at Hisoka’s neck, and his hips buck forward with the human release of orgasm, brought on by such life in him he feels himself bursting with it. He rides out the radiance of it, as the strain of pleasure spends itself into languid, glowing satisfaction hot in every vein, warm on his every breath; and then he collects himself, and he slides his fangs free of Hisoka’s body, and he draws up to look down at his prey.

Hisoka is paler than Illumi has ever seen him, lying sprawled on the bed under the weight of his own insupportable body. His lips are nearly violet where they’re parted on whatever words he lacks the strength to voice; his skin is bruised into shadow over his high cheekbones, darkened with the mortal injury Illumi’s thirst has dealt to him. His chest is straining over his breathing, his ribs standing out in clear relief against the taut of bloodless skin and his lips dry and cracked as if with desperate, dying thirst; only his hair retains the scarlet color of the life Illumi has seized from him, spread out into a tangle over the sheets like a bloody halo. His lashes shift as Illumi watches, dragging with such slow force the effort beneath the motion is patently clear; but when his eyes meet Illumi’s there’s consciousness there yet, still the intent focus of the man Illumi has taken for his lover and his toy these long weeks, who now lies dying from that same use. They look at each other for a long moment, Illumi unblinking as he stares into Hisoka’s half-lidded eyes still fighting to hold to the existence left to him; and then Illumi shifts his weight up onto one elbow, and lifts his own wrist in offer to Hisoka’s parched lips.

He doesn’t make any effort to help. His skin is harder than it looks, resilient with his immortal existence and more so, now, with Hisoka’s blood so hot in his veins; and Hisoka’s teeth are ill-suited for their task, with their blunt edges so much less effective than Illumi’s own razor-sharp fangs. But there is no point to easing this, not when Hisoka will need all the strength of will available to him for what lies ahead; and Illumi has no interest in one too weak to do what needs doing. So he offers his wrist, and he lets Hisoka strain to lay his teeth to the pale skin over coursing heat, and he waits while the other struggles in equal parts with Illumi’s body, with his own fading strength, with his desire to survive. Hisoka’s teeth drag, scraping without breaking the surface, reaching for heat without finding it; and then Hisoka hisses something vicious in his throat, and lifts his hand from his side to clutch at Illumi’s arm and hold it still. Illumi is impressed with his strength -- breakable, of course, as any mortal hold would be to him, but more than he expected, from a man gasping out the last human life left to him -- but more than that he’s watching Hisoka bare his teeth in savage desperation as he bites down hard against the skin of Illumi’s wrist. His teeth drag uselessly, friction without tearing; and then one of his blunt human canines catches at a vein, and Illumi’s skin tears open to spill blood over Hisoka’s desperate tongue.

Illumi lets Hisoka drink what he can. His blood is thicker than the other’s, heavy as syrup and strange and sweet to a mortal’s palate, and Hisoka is trembling as the last of his life fades, even that brief strength in his fingers falling slack as his tongue drags desperation over Illumi’s skin. But it doesn’t take much, after all -- a drop would be enough, for a determined man -- and by the time Hisoka’s head falls back to the pillows of the bed his cracked lips are stained with the scarlet of Illumi’s blood to mask the lack of his own. Illumi watches Hisoka’s lashes flutter, watches his tongue drag over the clinging wet at his mouth, and then he draws his hand back to brace himself at the sheets and pull back and away to leave Hisoka pale and strengthless against the bed.

“It’ll be over by tomorrow night,” Illumi tells him, although from how still Hisoka is he can’t be sure the other is hearing him at all. “If you survive the change this morning will be the last you see. If you don’t…” He shrugs. “It’ll still be the last.” He turns away to retrieve his clothes and pull himself back into some modicum of decency; behind him Hisoka’s breathing is going raspier, dragging on effort in his throat as instinct fights to cling to fading life. Illumi doesn’t turn around.

“I’ll see you again,” Illumi says as he shrugs his coat on and pulls his hair free of the collar to lie heavy across his shoulders. “If you turn successfully.” He looks back to the bed; Hisoka is still lying over the give of the sheets, although his eyes are shut now, and the weakness in his body is starting to shift to spastic tremors as the effect of Illumi’s blood spreads out into his veins to web shadows under the surface of his skin. Illumi watches for a minute, tracing the dark spreading from Hisoka’s chest to his shoulders, down his arms, along his thighs and against the curve of his shins; then Hisoka’s spine arches, and his breath rushes from him in a hiss, and Illumi turns away to leave him to the struggle of turning.

“Good luck,” he says, a moment of startling sincerity, and he slides the door open to slip out into the hallway and leave Hisoka to wage the battle for his continued survival alone.


	4. Benefit

Illumi doesn’t return to the city for weeks, after that.

He has no reason to go back. Hisoka has survived or not, and any attention Illumi might offer is useless in either case; and his hunger is thoroughly sated by the full meal he made of granting the other a chance at immortality. There are concerns at home, too, family matters as rumors surface of Illumi’s younger brother, run away some months hence, and for some time Illumi is too occupied in handling those and their repercussions to spare more than a fleeting thought for the plaything he left rasping for breath in that distant hotel room.

It’s hunger that brings him back, eventually. He’s been travelling for long weeks, making use of havens known to no one but himself as he attempts to seek out information on his recalcitrant sibling; but he turns back with the prickle of hunger, returning to more familiar haunts rather than making do with a quick meal in some foreign city or underpopulated village. It’s not from a sense of homesickness; Illumi has spent nearly a decade away from the regular company of his family, and familial bonds don’t often run to affection amidst his kind. But he _is_ curious, with a distant echo of the same interest that kept Hisoka alive for so long, and that is as good a reason as any for Illumi to do anything in the endless eternity of his existence.

He makes for the city with the first fall of night. Dusk is still clinging to the shadow of daylight, to a tinge of grey in the pitch black of the hours that Illumi and those of his ilk claim for their own; Illumi makes his way towards the city with easy patience, pacing through the darkness of the heavy trees that protect his family’s dwelling from any but the most determined of visitors. He is too well-dressed to be on foot, if anyone sees him pacing through the shadows of the trees; but his appetite and his fangs provide an easy solution to any accidental audience, and he’s not about to regret the simplicity of such a meal presenting itself to him.

“My my.” The voice is sharp as a knife, clear as birdsong as it drifts through the forest to Illumi’s ears. “This is hardly a fit place for a someone like yourself, good sir.”

Illumi halts his forward stride. That voice is too loud, too liquid in its tenor to carry the limiting force of mortality on it, but more: he knows it, feels the resonance of it in the marrow of his bones, in the rush of his blood seeking out the answering heat of its own kind. There is no sound to give away the other’s presence, no snap of a branch under an unwary foot or even the rustle of leaves shifting in the breeze of a cloak; but Illumi can feel him all the same, now that he’s still, thinks he could lift his hand to point directly to the source of that tone, that presence he knows as well as himself, now, even if he didn’t recognize the singsong lilt of those words.

He lifts his head, letting his chin rise by a half-inch so his hair spills a ripple down his back. “You survived.”

“Mm.” There’s a shudder of movement through the air behind Illumi’s back; he doesn’t turn. He doesn’t need to. Footsteps land light as air against the leaves behind him, swing wide to circle around the span of his shoulders. “I did.” There’s a touch against Illumi’s hair, fingertips gliding through the air just over the weight of the strands, and Illumi casts his gaze to the side without turning his head just as Hisoka steps forward and into view.

Immortality has been kind to him. His features were striking even as a human, enough to hold the well-worn path of Illumi’s attention in spite of decades of disinterest, but what was merely handsome before is uncanny beauty, now, recast from mortal coincidence into the deliberate  lure of vampiric charm. His lips claim scarlet of their own, now, without the assistance of the paint that clung to his skin on he and Illumi’s first meeting; his skin is moonlight pale, his lashes weighted dark by the burden of the night around them. His hair is crimson as ever, falling into waves that skim his shoulders with the fluid illusion of liquid in themselves, and his movements have all the dancer’s grace that he held in his limbs before recast into such lithe elegance that Illumi can’t be certain his feet are even touching the ground. But most striking of all, in all the thousand points of polish and beauty that have laid themselves into the creature now turning to face Illumi fully, is the gold of his eyes, burnished so bright they seem to glow as they collect the near-invisible remnants of the day’s brightness still left in the sky. They are a predator’s eyes, lined in darkness and fixed on Illumi’s face; and then Hisoka smiles, and the points of his teeth flash starbright in the darkness.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Hisoka purrs. His hand is still at Illumi’s hair; as he speaks he takes a half-step closer to tear away at the distance between them and place himself nearer the span of Illumi’s chest. His arm drapes across the other’s shoulder; his fingers catch at the other’s hair. “I thought you had abandoned your husband so soon after claiming him.”

“I told you I would find you again,” Illumi tells him without blinking away from the bright of those eyes fixed on him. “If you survived.”

Hisoka’s lips draw back in a smile. “Which I did.” He tilts his chin to toss his hair back from his features and lifts a hand to push through the locks. “More than survived. I’m _flourishing_.”

Illumi doesn’t look away. “I thought it would suit you.”

“And it does.” Hisoka lets his head come down again, lets his hand trail down the side of his neck and over his chest with the slow weight of a caress. “I’ve never felt like this before.” His teeth flash blinding for a moment, brighter even than they ever were as a human; Illumi imagines he can see the edge of moonlight cutting itself against the points of those teeth. “Who would have thought how _alive_ I would feel after dying?”

“Indeed.” Illumi pauses, long enough to grant his neutral statement the weight it deserves; and then he lifts his chin, and he fixes Hisoka with the unblunted force of his attention. “So what do you want now, Hisoka?”

Hisoka’s crimson mouth purses into a pout. “Cold,” he purrs. “You’re always so _cold_ , Illumi.” He lifts his hand from his hip to touch at the other’s hair and drag a long lock of it forward to smooth over Illumi’s chest. “Cold and beautiful. Aren’t we friends?”

“No,” Illumi says without any hesitation. “You were my prey, nothing more.”

“Which makes you what, for playing with me so long?” Hisoka’s lashes dip over the honey-gold of his eyes; his pout catches up at the corners to a smirk. “A cat, maybe.” Illumi lifts a shoulder in a shrug, not bothering to give voice to his absolute neutrality, and Hisoka’s mouth pulls up wider.

“I’ve been thinking.” He winds Illumi’s hair around his fingers, looping the dark weight of the strands against the play of his touch; Illumi doesn’t turn his gaze to look, but he can see the flicker of Hisoka’s movement in his periphery, the motion elegant as a magician’s gesture to pull illusion from the smoke and mirrors of nothing. “Why did you keep me alive for so long?”

Illumi shrugs again. “It was convenient.”

“Yes,” Hisoka purrs. “Far better than having to wander the streets to find fresh blood for yourself, when it comes so willingly for your call, wasn’t it?” He draws in an unnecessary breath and heaves a gusty sigh that ruffles Illumi’s hair. “Too bad that option is lost to you now.”

Illumi doesn’t blink or move to pull away from Hisoka’s wandering touch at his hair. “Get to the point.”

“My point,” Hisoka repeats. He slides his hold through Illumi’s hair and draws his index finger free to touch against the side of the other’s neck with the sharp edge of one fingernail. His gaze follows his finger, his head tilting to the side as he considers the friction against the other’s skin. “You have a need for blood, yes?”

“Yes,” Illumi says. “As do you.”

“I do,” Hisoka agrees. “I also have a position in the city that gives me more _intimate_ knowledge of the population living within it.” He slides his finger across Illumi’s skin to touch his fingertip to the cool of the other’s neck directly. “I could eat three times a night for a year and never run low on prey.”

“I see,” Illumi says, and does. “You want an alliance.” Hisoka ducks his head without lifting his touch from Illumi’s neck. “What do you want in payment?”

“ _Power_ ,” Hisoka purrs, dropping the word into such depth that it seems to hum with all the shadows of a dozen hotel rooms, all the heat Illumi drew from his body and drained from his veins, and his thumb slides in to pin against the midpoint of Illumi’s throat, hard against the other’s windpipe. “You’re stronger than I am, older than I am. You have power I can’t access no matter how many humans I drain to dust.”

Illumi lets his lungs empty in a silent exhale, chill as the night air around them, cold as Hisoka’s fingers on his skin. “Blood for blood.”

Hisoka’s lips curl into a smile polished to a razor sheen. “It’s so pleasant to talk to someone with _intelligence_ ,” he purrs. “If this is what eternity is like, I see why you turned me.” Illumi doesn’t bother answering and Hisoka doesn’t wait for a response; he just slides his hand down from the outline of a threat he was offering to brace against Illumi’s shoulder instead.

“So what do you say?” Hisoka’s lashes flutter, his gaze lifts to Illumi’s face; his lips are still taut around that smile, red as blood against the inhuman pale of his skin, the shining white of his teeth. “Do we have a deal?”

Illumi looks at Hisoka for a moment, feeling time unfurl between them, uncurling between their gazes like a river coursing its way from the past to the future while they watch it, untouched by the effect of the water against them. Hisoka’s mouth is curved onto a smile, his eyes glowing with an invitation; but there’s a certainty to his hold that says he knows Illumi’s answer already, as surely as Illumi knew the identity of that blood singing to his own as it flows through the veins of another existence. It’s keener, like this, with them close enough that the pull is almost magnetic; and for all Hisoka’s arrogant self-assurance, Illumi isn’t one to play coy just for the sake of being contrary.

He doesn’t open his mouth to give voice to his answer. He doesn’t speak at all; just lifts his hand from his side, reaching up and around the side of his neck to catch at the heavy weight of his hair hanging to a shadowed burden against his shoulder. Hisoka lets his hold loosen as Illumi tugs to slide the curl of his hair free of the other’s fingers and draw it back along with the rest of the weight; Illumi lets his head draw to the side as well, urged to a tilt by the sweep of his hair in the pull of his fingers. The motion leaves the line of his throat bare for the moonlight, laid clear to the illumination overhead and the bright of Hisoka’s eyes; and Hisoka’s lashes dip, his chest tightens on a purr as heated as any he ever gave while mortal. His hand tightens at Illumi’s shoulder with something of true strength, now, enough that Illumi feels the base instinct to retreat surge down his spine, but Hisoka moves with whip-speed, ducking in over Illumi as fast as he bares the wet shine of his teeth. Illumi’s shoulders tense, his body pulling taut on the risk of a fight, and then Hisoka’s teeth pierce the resistance of his skin to plunge into the thick heat of the blood beneath, and Illumi’s eyes go wide as vampiric teeth penetrate the cool of his body. Hisoka’s hands are holding him still, braced at his shoulder and clutching at the small of his back to steady him; but Illumi is reaching out too, his fingers winding into Hisoka’s hair to press the other closer as Hisoka’s throat works over a swallow of Illumi’s blood. Illumi can feel the loss in him, as Hisoka drains some measure of the force that sustains his existence; but in exchange there is heat, an ecstacy of flame in him, radiating through his skin to light his blood with sunlight, to eclipse everything he is with exquisite pleasure. Illumi’s lips part, his chest strains over a gasping inhale, and when it spills from his lips it takes the shape of a moan that resonates through the very core of his chill existence, a prayer of gratitude for the daylight he thought long since sacrificed.

Illumi has always worked alone before now, but he can already see benefits to this partnership.


	5. Leaven

The next time Illumi crosses the boundary of the city, he doesn’t go alone.

He’s out for more than simply a meal, this time. It’s rare for requests to come through for one of the Zoldyck family -- they are isolated even among their own kind, and even more rare than a request from a fellow vampire is the unusual human able to collect enough information to both make contact and successfully convey their request while retaining their own life. But Illumi has seen it happen a handful of times over his near-century of existence, and when the assassination request comes in this time it falls to him to execute it. It perhaps should have been Killua’s maiden assignment; but Illumi’s brother is still absent, in spite of the family’s continued efforts to return him to the fold, and with his abilities not presently available Illumi has no compunctions about offering himself as the lead for this assignment.

He has a new set of skills he wants to test, after all.

Hisoka proves his worth immediately. The hardest part of any of these assignments is attaining information on the target and picking them out from the mass of humanity that fills the streets of the city; this is something Illumi’s brother Milluki excels at, in the absence of any other notable skills. But Illumi isn’t in the mood to enter into the complex negotiations that are always necessary to gain Milluki’s help in obtaining the information he needs; so he draws on Hisoka instead, handing over the photograph and name that is all the information he himself was granted. Illumi wonders, sometimes, if there aren’t more details available to his father when he receives these requests; but if there is the removal of any other data is a test that has become habit by now, and Illumi doesn’t expect more. It’s his responsibility to locate the additional details, by bargaining, or brute force, or the use of his own newly-christened resources.

Hisoka doesn’t balk at the lack of information in what Illumi gives him. He just takes the photograph, and repeats back the name, and tells Illumi to come back the next night. The next sundown Illumi finds Hisoka waiting for him with the photograph in his hand, and a grin at his lips, and a gesture to urge the other into following him before turning to lead the way out of the fringe of the forest and into the main part of the city.

Illumi has no idea how Hisoka got his information. Maybe he made use of his human-formed network of informants; maybe he’s used his new vampiric charm to win his way into answers to any questions he offers. Maybe it’s some new ability held long-nascent in Illumi’s blood, awakened by the press of desperate lips and the drag of a thirsty tongue, that lets Hisoka pull the woman out from the horde of humanity that swells the streets like a flood spilling a river over its banks. The facts are simply these: Hisoka leading Illumi through the city, cutting as straight a path as can be found from the outskirts of the streets through the winding warren of backalleys that form the shadowed depths of the city’s underbelly, until finally he stops on the far side of a slightly wider street and throws his arm out to bring Illumi to a halt where the other is following in his wake.

“It’s here.” Hisoka has his head cocked to the side as if he’s listening to something unheard, like he’s catching the strain of some distant music in the air; Illumi can hear nothing but the dull roar of the city around them, the creak and clatter of machinery and buildings laid over the constant, seething hiss of life from gutter rats to the humans that move around Hisoka and Illumi’s silent existences without even seeing them. Hisoka’s head angles more sharply, his lashes flutter heavy over his eyes; his forehead creases as if with concentration, like he’s trying to focus himself on that inaudible note. “She spends most of her time in this area of the city.” He grimaces, his teeth flickering white and dangerous for a moment of unsubtle clarity; Illumi watches the shift of the other’s features, watches them angle and distort like a reflection over the ripples in water as the veneer of humanity shudders and nearly breaks to the force of Hisoka’s attention. “I can _feel_ her, she must be nearby now--”

Illumi reaches out to clap his palm tight over Hisoka’s mouth, as much to cover the giveaway of the other’s teeth as to stifle the sound of the words whining over tension in his throat. Hisoka’s eyes come open to fix Illumi with a glare of such heat that it stands as threat all on its own, but Illumi doesn’t turn his head to meet the danger of the other’s attention. He’s looking down the street instead, his gaze slicing through the haze of the city street and the disguising force of the night around them to flicker past features of the crowd surging down the street, the faces too masculine, too young, too attractive to be the target he’s looking for. It seems impossible, for a moment, as if perhaps that half-caught glimpse was an invention of his focus rather than the reality of epiphany he felt; but in the decades of his existence Illumi has spent more time with himself than with anyone else, and there is nothing he trusts so much as his own instincts. He knows what he saw, felt it certain in him like iron connecting to a magnet; and then his gaze picks out the details of lank, pale hair, a mouth as petulant as it is hard, eyes dark and cast down on the pavement instead of up at the crowd, and he can feel all the strain in his body go slack as he gazes at the face of the woman he has been sent here to kill.

“There,” Illumi says, breathing the word to the air with a softness that makes it more for his own hearing than Hisoka’s. It’s habit, forgetfulness of the partner he has with him even as his hand still lingers close over the other’s lips; long years of routine are not so easily forgotten, to remind him that he has someone else to think of now. In the moment all Illumi is seeing is the woman whose photograph he lingered over with such intent, all his focus is on the next few minutes, the thrill of the hunt and the bright, brilliant satisfaction of the anticipated kill. His hand goes slack from where he’s holding Hisoka back, he takes a step forward towards the stranger in the middle of the street; and there’s a pressure in the air, a burst of motion so fast Illumi can feel the wind of it through his hair. He turns his head to look, reflex overriding even his absolute focus on his prey, but it’s too late, his reaction is too slow, his response too delayed. The figure beside him is gone already, well past Illumi’s grasp and moving with unnatural speed through the crowd before them; it’s only as Hisoka slows to lay hand to the woman’s arm that Illumi’s gaze can pick him out from the surroundings, and by then he’s too far distant for Illumi to do anything to help or hinder either one. Hisoka’s head comes up, his gold-glowing eyes catch Illumi’s from across the distance of the street; Illumi sees a flicker of white as the other bares his teeth into a promise as much as a threat. Then there’s movement, too quick for even Illumi’s eyes to follow; but he’s moving himself, surging forward and away from the corner where he has been cloaking himself in darkness without thought for the cluster of humanity still well in sight. The crowd skitters back and away from him, flinching away with terrified instinct from the sudden emergence of something too fast and too feral for their comprehension; but Illumi doesn’t spare them a glance. His focus is farther on, in the shadows of the alley where he can pick out red hair, and broad shoulders, and the scent of fresh blood wafting out into the air like the heady rush of perfume.

Even Illumi’s speed can’t match Hisoka’s edge of surprise. Illumi crosses the street in a matter of seconds, bolting from one side to the other so quickly most of the humans around him will think him a trick of the light; but Hisoka already has his fangs in the woman’s neck, and all the impatient lust he held as a human has merged seamlessly with the all-consuming hunger of a fresh-awakened vampire. The woman has gone limp by the time Illumi reaches for Hisoka’s shoulder, her pulse stalling to the chill of death as quickly as Illumi wrenches the other back and off her -- his _prey_ , stolen by a _rival_ \-- to fling Hisoka back against the side of the alley instead. Hisoka might be faster but Illumi proves stronger; his motion is enough to sweep the other off his feet entirely, to send him flying through the air to crash hard enough into the brick wall behind him that the masonry shudders and brings down a cascade of powder to dust his hair to white.

There’s no fear in Hisoka’s face, even as Illumi advances upon him with the full force of rage he hasn’t felt in years, in decades of existence that have gone cool and flat with distance. He’s grinning, his teeth bloody and his mouth wet with the woman’s blood, and he keeps grinning even when Illumi reaches to seize his fingers around the other’s neck, to dig in to shove him up against the wall until Hisoka’s toes are barely skimming the ground beneath him.

“ _Thief_ ,” Illumi hisses, giving over his glamour for the full feral rage he can feel burning a flame behind his eyes, can feel trembling in the strength of his shoulders and quivering through his fingertips. “That was _mine_.”

Hisoka laughs open-mouthed; Illumi can smell the blood on his lips, can see the color painting scarlet across his tongue. “Finder’s keepers,” he purrs. Illumi can feel the flex of his throat working over the sound, muscle straining against the weight of the other’s grip. Hisoka touches his tongue to his lips to lick slow over the red staining the curve of them; Illumi’s attention trails the motion, watching as the other laps the last of the red from his mouth and swallows with intent before he grins again. “Want a taste?”

Illumi growls down in the depths of his chest. It’s a raw, animal noise, rising up from the core of his being like it’s forming itself from the years of existence he has collected, from the shadows of every night he has seen. It would be enough to turn any human’s bowels to water, to melt the strength from their knees to drop them pleading before him as a supplicant to a god; it would have been enough to frighten Hisoka, even, as he was. But Hisoka isn’t human anymore, he sold his survival instinct for the gift of the night now around them, and Hisoka just laughs, a mercurial peal of sound that rises up into the shadows around them until Illumi leans in to crush his mouth against the other’s. Hisoka meets him immediately, turning his head to take the blow as he opens his mouth and plunges his tongue past Illumi’s lips, and Illumi meets him in kind, digging his nails in against Hisoka’s throat while he raids the inside of the other’s mouth in search of some beggar’s portion of the blood that was his due. Hisoka’s mouth is hot, sweet with a burn like alcohol and burning Illumi’s lips with the venomous edge of his teeth, but what blood there is is faint, fading as fast as Illumi can follow it to its source. Far sharper is the scent of Hisoka’s own blood, smearing against his skin where Illumi’s nails have gouged into the side of his neck; until finally Illumi draws back from the heat of Hisoka’s lips to pant for the taste of blood from the air his body doesn’t need.

“Fine,” Illumi says in a voice made of that shadow in his chest and the ache of need running down to the very core of his existence. “I’ll just take it back.” And he grabs at Hisoka’s hair to wrench the other’s head to the side and bare the blood-smeared line of his throat. Hisoka chokes off a laugh, open-mouthed and wet with heat, and Illumi drops his feet back to the pavement so he can grab against the other’s shoulder instead and duck in against the curve of his neck. Hisoka’s skin is warm with the immediacy of his meal, supple and flushed almost to the point of humanity; it gives way to the razor of Illumi’s teeth so immediately it’s more of a tear than a bite, as Illumi’s strength rips past skin to demand the surrender of the blood stolen before his very eyes. Hisoka’s blood floods his mouth, richer and darker than it ever was before, sweeter than any human Illumi has ever tasted, and while Hisoka moans into the dark of the night Illumi’s grip on his hair eases, fury melting away to the surge of gratification that hits him instead. Hisoka tastes like wine, like ambrosia, heady and dizzying Illumi’s thoughts with every swallow he takes from the other’s veins, until he barely feels the fingers clutching at his hair to hold him closer, until he hardly notices the cant of Hisoka’s hips bucking up to grind against his own. He just pushes forward, urging Hisoka back to the wall so he can drug himself in the intoxication of another vampire’s blood while Hisoka shudders with the heat of his bite, moaning his appreciation to the echoing dark of the night around them without concern for who may hear them.

It has been long, long years since Illumi was so reckless in taking his pleasure, but he forgives himself such, in exchange for a satisfaction so exquisite.


	6. Dawn

They make a good team, in the end.

Illumi has never worked with a partner before. He’s never had the need for one, beyond what trivial details he can purchase from Milluki’s store of information, and the idea of sharing a kill is one he’s never approved of, even when he was at his most well-fed. But the taste of Hisoka’s blood on his tongue -- the feel of Hisoka’s teeth in his flesh -- unfolds new possibilities, opens up the possibility of a reality that Illumi had never even thought existed. His jealous hoarding of his prey melts away, unraveled in the span of a single bite alongside the cracked masonry of a night-dark alley; and in exchange he finds satisfaction as if he’s newly turned and still wild in the pleasure of his own immortal body. Hisoka loves the hunt, loves the chase of running a target down and the satisfaction of dealing the mortal blow with a raw savagery that Illumi can’t recall ever feeling; but he can borrow it, now, can feel something of the outline of it in the sound of Hisoka’s laughter and the splash of crimson blood across the other’s pale skin. Hisoka relishes their work, enjoys the process as much as the conclusion with a heat in him almost human and entirely sensual; and Illumi watches him with unblinking intent, as if he might be able to lay hand to the other’s pleasure himself if he watches long and hard enough. He never does, not directly -- whatever it is that runs so manic in Hisoka is some part of his existence that Illumi doesn’t share, however much blood they may hand back and forth between them -- but he doesn’t need to, either, not when he can find pleasure precisely to his own tastes from the fringes of Hisoka’s.

Hisoka is a fast learner. He takes to the construction of glamours as if born to it, shifting the already striking lines of his face and body into whatever may prove most appealing to their targets, whether it be the doe-eyed uncertainty of corruptible innocence or the dark knowing of experience ready to offer itself to the pursuit of shared knowledge. Hisoka seduces their victims away from the crowds, pulls them into shadowed alleys or narrow hotels or burnt-out buildings, and Illumi learns to stand far back from the slash of Hisoka’s nails or the flare of his teeth in the messy style he proves to favor. Illumi has never been one for dramatic killings -- the blood is enough to satisfy, when the deed itself proves insufficient -- but he hardly cares what Hisoka indulges in, so long as he gets the result he craves. Hisoka paints himself red, crimson as the curve of his lips and the curl of his hair, and it’s only after he’s marked in the proof of his own victory, with his cheeks flushed hot with stolen blood and rising desire, that Illumi steps forward to take him in hand and lead him into the shadows that are more to his own tastes.

They’re in one such now. Illumi’s safehouses are simple things, spaces to offer shelter from the light of day and the occasional relief that comes with complete isolation; with Hisoka’s influence they have adopted a frantic kind of style, effected by the addition of mismatched furniture suited more to vampiric aesthetics than to maintaining the illusion of human needs. There’s no kind of a kitchen, only the bare minimum of a bathroom; instead the space is occupied with a bed, drenched in sheets heavy with the opulence of cloth that slides silk-smooth over cool skin, and a pair of couches as blood-dark as Hisoka’s hair in shadow. The sheets of the bed are tangled, rumpled out of all keeping by rough use and little attention to restoration after the fact, but even Illumi’s attention to precision doesn’t have the space to balk when Hisoka is stripped down to no more than the scarlet of spilled blood painting the illusion of life across the pale of his body.

He is as quick about his motion now as he was the first time, as he has been every time, as if clothes are no more than an unnecessary burden, a barely-tolerated concession to the demands of a society whose approval he no longer needs. Hisoka pays no more attention to the value of his clothing in casting it aside than he does in keeping it back from the spray of red he is so keen to coat himself in; and if Illumi is hardly about to follow his example, he can’t deny that he appreciates the result all the same. Hisoka comes free from his clothes sticky with blood, his skin catching the red heat of it to smears across his chest, hands, even his stomach and shoulders, sometimes, when it gets in his hair and drips clinging weight along the strands; and Illumi comes for him as quickly, reaching for the other with fingers that strain to claws on the vibrant force of his thirst, the desire so much keener with this greater satisfaction than anything he has mustered for the relative mundanity of mortal life. Hisoka comes forward to meet him, as self-assured clad in nothing but his victim’s blood as he is in the finest of this decade’s garments, and when Illumi’s fingers clutch into Hisoka’s shoulder Hisoka’s hands are as forceful in his hair to drag Illumi forward, as if to pierce himself against the points of the other’s teeth without waiting for the flex of Illumi’s jaw and the motion working in his throat. Hisoka moans at the intrusion, as he always does, full-throated and shameless in the heat that spills from his lips, and when his hips come forward it’s with force enough to knock Illumi free of his balance and send them both toppling back to the floor. The bed is a few feet away, an easy reach for Hisoka and easier still for the gift of near-weightless motion Illumi’s immortal gifts grant him, but neither of them move to claim it; Hisoka is spreading his knees wide around Illumi’s hips to grind the heat of his arousal against the resistance of the other’s body, and Illumi is hardly about to give up his attention to the taste, the feel, the heat of Hisoka’s blood on his tongue and spilling down his throat for something as trivial as physical comfort.

Illumi’s never tasted anything like Hisoka’s blood in all his life. His human memories are hazy, lost to distance and eclipsed almost past recollection by the vivid clarity of the immortal existence that granted the same life to him that Hisoka is still marvelling at, in his first early months and years of eternity. But time has worn the shine off even what once seemed impossibly vivid, has dulled the edge of what once felt razor-sharp in its presence, until even the pleasure of feeding became no more than a task, nothing but another mechanical step forward in an existence sustained as much by habit as true desire for continuation. Illumi has never sought an end -- he’s too accustomed to surviving, too attached to the space that forms out the well-worn familiarity of his consciousness -- but the taste of Hisoka’s blood at his lips grants him a will to live, truly and immediately, that he had forgotten even existed. It is a drug, an epiphany with every drop, ecstasy surging through his body with every mouthful; until even the feel of Hisoka’s blood-sticky fingers wrenching at his hair is more pleasure than irritation, until Illumi is as hard against the weight of Hisoka’s cock grinding against him as the other without any conscious thought at all. Hisoka steals his kills, and Illumi steals Hisoka’s lifeforce in turn, until there is nothing to distinguish them, no way to separate the one from the other. Hisoka shoves Illumi down to the dust of the floor, and Illumi seizes Hisoka’s wrist to keep drinking, to keep the flow of heat past his lips and down his throat unstemmed, and he doesn’t protest even when Hisoka’s too-tight grip tears through delicate seams and rips expensive fabric asunder. The future is meaningless, the past is an illusion; the only thing that matters, the only thing that ever _could_ matter, is this moment, right now, with the sweet of dizzying wine on Illumi’s tongue and Hisoka’s fingers pushing up between his legs and the whole of the world spinning itself into orbit around the trade of blood from body to body, lips pressing and throats working and the two of them collapsing in on each other to form a single, eternal existence.

It’s Hisoka who always pushes for more, who urges them on into the physical counterpart for the connection Illumi prefers to form with lips and tongue and teeth. It _is_ his preference, for intensity as well as ease; but he never resists when Hisoka’s hands push his thighs open, never lifts his head to give protest when slick fingers press in under his balls to urge up and into the heat of his body. Hisoka’s blood is enough for Illumi, a drug keen enough to sate even a century of slow-building desire; but Hisoka demands everything, immediately, with the determined force of a true hedonist, and if Illumi doesn’t seek it himself that doesn’t mean he doesn’t appreciate it. There’s a satisfaction to the friction, like filling in the space between the cool mundanity of his regular existence and the spiking crests of each pulse of Hisoka’s blood over his tongue, until Illumi’s mouth gives way with the first thrust of Hisoka’s cock spearing into him, his teeth sliding free of Hisoka’s skin as he groans a choked note of pleasure at this sensation coupling so seamlessly with the satisfaction of feeding. Hisoka laughs, far back in his throat, like he’s savouring the taste of the amusement at the very back of his tongue, and when Illumi lowers his head back to the scarlet arc of his teeth imprinted in Hisoka’s skin Hisoka ducks forward to take him too, to sink his own fangs into the line of Illumi’s throat in turn.

Illumi imagines he can feel the blood spilling from one of them to the other, traded between lips and veins and teeth as their mutual pleasure surges higher with every motion, until he can feel the heat rising a flood in him, urging up and into his body with every shift in his throat. Hisoka is moving in him, Illumi thinks, or Illumi is moving onto Hisoka; but it’s just an echo of the real connection, as they commingle a single lifeforce as fluidly as their bodies slide and shift together. Illumi’s cock is pressing to Hisoka’s stomach, Hisoka’s hips are bucking sharp against Illumi’s thighs; but it’s the ache in Illumi’s throat that he feels most keenly, the drag of want heavy as lead in his veins demanding more, all of it, the heat and the blood and the life all surging into his body as if to take Hisoka into the very core of his being, as if to form a single identity of them both at once. Hisoka’s moving faster, skidding them over the floor with every forward flex of his thighs, but Illumi has a stranglehold at Hisoka’s neck and the strength of muscle in his arm, locking the other in place as he pulls blood from the thudding heat of Hisoka’s veins into the pliant certainty of his own. They’re moving, feeding, bleeding as one, illumination reflected endlessly between paired mirrors; until Hisoka’s body jolts, and Illumi’s hands clench, and they break into the dawn of ecstasy shared out between them in come and blood and bliss.

They are both trembling, by the time the bright passes. Illumi’s eyes are open, he realizes, wide and staring sightless at the ceiling overhead; Hisoka’s mouth is still close to his shoulder, panting with the habit of breathing as his hips rock in idle pursuit of a last jolt of the pleasure they have spent between themselves. They are both fever-hot, the cool of eternity chased back by the brief endlessness of ecstacy between them, and Illumi finds himself clinging to Hisoka over him as much as Hisoka is holding to him, their hands and legs and arms and hair intertwined as inextricably as the blood shared between them. Even when Hisoka sighs resigned satisfaction and lets himself slip from the grip of Illumi’s body, the connection doesn’t fade, until Illumi feels like he might be borrowing Hisoka’s features, as if it might be the sultry part of scarlet lips pulling the habit of air into his lungs, as if his hair might be a tumble of crimson waves instead of a sheaf of shadowed ebony. He blinks up at the ceiling, wondering how to tell himself apart, wondering if it matters; and then Hisoka stirs, and lifts his head, and Illumi’s gaze slides from the ceiling overhead to heavy-lidded eyes with seamless ease. They gaze at each other for a moment, Hisoka’s eyes dark with consideration and Illumi’s flat with objectivity; and then Illumi blinks, and Hisoka smiles, and speaks.

“You look pensive,” he observes. “What are you thinking of, dearest husband?”

Illumi shakes his head. “We’re bound together, now.”

Hisoka’s teeth flash. “For better or for worse,” he says, reciting the words into the singsongy tone of a vow chanted out of meaning. “From this day forth.”

Illumi blinks. “From this day forth,” he echoes.

Hisoka grins down at him. His hand slides free from Illumi’s hair to press to the other’s cheek instead, to brace intention against Illumi’s jawline, and Illumi holds steady for it, gazing unflinching up as Hisoka ducks in to press their mouths together. Hisoka’s lips taste like blood, hot and sweet and dark as the night; and then his tongue slides over Illumi’s mouth, and Illumi parts his lips, and shuts his eyes, and lets the heat of Hisoka’s mouth spark daybreak across the shadows of his eyelids.


End file.
